Michael Jackson Is Gone, but the Sad Facts Remain

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/06/michael-jackson-is-gone-but-the-sad-facts-remain.html

by Maureen Orth

June 26, 2009, 11:53 AM

nt

FWIW, the writer is the wife of the late Tim Russert. A snippet:

........I spoke to hundreds of people who knew Jackson and, in the course of my reporting, found families who had given their sons up to him and paid dearly for it. I found people who had been asked to supply him with drugs. I even found the business manager who told me on-the-record how he had had to wire $150,000 to a voodoo chief in Mali who had 42 cows ritually sacrificed in order to put a curse on David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and 23 others on Jackson’s enemies list. I sat through two trials and watched his bizarre behavior on the stand when he said he did not recognize his publicist of a decade. One of the reasons I endured this not-fun circus was that, when I began, I was the mother of a boy roughly the same age as the ones Jackson was so interested in spending the night with. His behavior truly troubled me. Understandably, in the wake of his death, there are those who do not want to hear these sad facts. Yet nothing that Vanity Fair printed was ever challenged legally by Jackson or his associates. .......

Deepak Chopra came right out and said so, IN CONTEXT.

over?

She's not a gossip-monger--she's got some difficult FACTS in those articles, that include some pretty fucked up behavior on the part of "Saint Michael." She got his demerol addiction right--five whole years ago:

Michael Jackson refers to white wine as "Jesus juice" and red wine as "Jesus blood." He prefers the juice and usually drinks it out of soda cans so that nobody will know he is consuming alcohol. In and out of rehab over the years for addictions to Demerol and morphine, the King of Pop also habitually gulped down soda cans of wine, particularly when he was on airplanes. On a flight to Frankfurt in 1999, for example, his former business adviser Myung-Ho Lee, who was accompanying him, had to help the staggering Jackson stand up to get off the plane. "He was lying on the floor by the time we landed," says Lee. "I told Security, 'You can't get drunk like that on white wine,' and the security people said that it's not only wine but that he takes pills with it."

http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2004/03/orth200403


Deepak Chopra isn't a reporter. Maureen Orth is. Deal with it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2005/07/orth200507

Orth is tops, does a great job, and as you've rightfully pointed out, was never challenged by any of the litigious Jackson camp over anything she wrote.

The insistence that Jackson was anything less than a complicated, complex human being with many dangerous and destructive flaws is viewed by the Valley Of The Blind as sacrilege.

"There are none so blind as those who will not see."

I don't understand what makes people cling so desperately to fictions when the facts are right there, indisputable and verifiable.

It's sort of how I don't understand the fundies.............................................

and refuse to see shades of gray.

by refusing to see that some facts of Michaels legend were tragic.

You were one of those people who used to cry at his concerts weren't you?

It was impossible to refute at the time, and the damage was done by the time of the acquittal four months later. All the challenges and denials in the world were not about to undo, or could undo, the damage Orth and her ilk had already done.

It just boggles my mind that so many users of DU, notoriously distrustful of the 4th estate, have such blind faith when it comes to this kind of print journalism.

:shrug:

karma is going to get her, no matter. It always does

is that just when they point out that some idols have feet of clay and molest young boys?

What's vile is people who mitigate the rape of children. Now, that's vile!

That is sincerely odd. I've seen you go from, "we'll never know" to "I don't care if the accusations were true", and now it's all certainly a lie?

I'm seeing a LOT of this regarding MJ. The longer he's dead the more certainly innocent of everything he becomes, somehow.

molester.

why didn't he cough up money the second time , because he figured out what he did the first time was a mistake. The second time he stood his ground and proved his innocence.

Where people like him have difficulty in the General Population.

He didn't cough up money the second time because the DA had the case -- not a civil attorney. The child abuse reporting procedure got in front of him. The kid's shrink had already turned him in.

See, if you'd read the articles provided in the link the OP gave you, instead of shooting off your keyboard with an impassioned, dumbass and flawed defense of a dead pervert, you would know these things.

Paying up to those leeches the first time was his biggest mistake.

He was acquitted , after having his reputation tarnished in the dust.So , live with it.

Uh, uh, he was GONNA be acquitted the first time!

Yeah, that's why he coughed up all that money. Because he was GONNA be acquitted!!

:rofl:

He wasn't interested in finding out what Life in Jail was all about.

Live with that--and your perverse worship of a pervert.

I'll defend the children before I'd spend a second of concern on a no-nose, perverted drug addict.

Answer me this, why did the family accept the money ! because that was their intention all along . Do you think if Jackson really did such an awful thing any (decent) parent would accept money instead seeking jail for the bastard.

I sure would not. You can't put a dollar amount on the suffering of your kid , those Parents apparently did.

This was MJ's biggest mistake , paying them.

managing his own money. So, ooops, you're wrong about that shit, now, aren't ya?

But see, you'd know that if you had read the articles, instead of running around this board incessantly praising a fucking pervert and getting pissed at anyone who is calling a sick, disgusting child rapist a child rapist.

Why are you blaming Michael Jackson's young victim for the actions of his parents, anyway? What kind of sick shit is that? Plainly, in your warped mind, if a murdered child has bad parents, then it's the kid's fault? That's the logic you are presenting here.

Keep defending that dead, doped up pervert. Keep making it quite clear how little respect you have for the safety of innocent kids. It's elucidative.

I don't agree with you on everything MADem but you're spot on here IMO.

Why are you so ready to condemn the parents for accepting the payoff, but refuse to condemn Jackson for paying it?

I agree that the parents' acceptance of hush money was morally questionable-- but paying such hush money was at *least* equally questionable. You dismiss one out of hand, and instantly condemn with the other.

your boyfriends wouldn't have dated you and your own children would be in danger.

Come on. That's like criticizing people because they have frontal lobes and can tell stories.

I don't understand why some people think we're supposed to pretend he wasn't simply because he's dead.

and excuse child molestation and endangerment, drug abuse, and eccentricities that included not paying his frigging bills to the tune of four hundred million bucks, because he had, once upon a long ago time, a bit of talent?

He's been a train wreck for many years--this is five years ago:
http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2004/03/orth200403

Over the years Jackson has doled out millions upon millions of dollars to lawyers, doctors, accountants, security people, con men, voodoo chiefs, business advisers, members of his bankrupted dysfunctional family, an ex-wife who allegedly threatened to tell his secrets, former staffers on remittance, and the families of young boys he has made his "special friends" all over the world. There is almost never a time when he is free of crisis, and as a result, say many who know him, it has become more and more difficult for him to trust his advisers or not to feel paranoid about something. "He has a lot of skeletons in his closet," says Lee. "Some are real and some are in his mind, which makes him a prisoner of all those around him." The result is often chaos. Jackson has a $200-million-plus bank loan—guaranteed by his half-interest in the Sony/ATV music catalogue, which owns the publishing rights to 251 Beatles songs and many other pop songs—and it falls due in 2005. These days it is difficult to get a straight read on Jackson's finances, other than the cash-flow situation, which is reportedly dire. "Nobody really knows if there is money or not," says Dieter Wiesner, one of his recent managers. The coveted Sony/ATV catalogue is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. However, as I reported in this magazine last year, Sony has the right of first refusal if Jackson is forced to sell his share, and he cannot sell, according to Lee, before October 2005, the 10th anniversary of the partnership. There are reports that Jackson is meanwhile being bailed out by a number of interested parties, including Al Malnik, the flamboyant Miami lawyer who once represented Meyer Lansky. Malnik reportedly put up much of the money to settle two civil suits against Jackson last year —a figure estimated at close to $10 million.

All you MJ worshipers give it a try sometime. We'll write you in prison.

We are witnessing the extremes of fandom with MJ. How can his fans be so blind to who the man really was?

From Michael Jackson’s increasingly freakish appearance to his voodoo death spells, to the disturbing revelations in a $21.2 million civil suit against him, the pop star’s life has been spinning out of control. Investigating his spiraling debt, his grandiose schemes, and his controversial relationship with children, Maureen Orth wonders if Jackson is as crazy as he seems—or a cool manipulator of his own fame.

Technique: Jackson looks like a freak so it's not surprising that he's a child molester. The thinking person would now ask himself, how many of the CONVICTED (I know, it's an annoying demand) child molesters in recent memory went out of their way to look like freaks? None that I can recall. Most of them looked and acted like pillars of the community.

I don't understand your use of that word.

So Jackson was not only sexually maladjusted (I'll be kind here), but his ways of dealing with his own appearance led him to do multiple mutilating acts upon his own face and his skin. You need only to look at him to know that there was something terribly, terribly wrong.

His sexual life was quite separate from what he did to his face.

So, I don't see how you're conflating what Orth wrote and coming up with some kind of theory about what pedophiles look like. If Jackson hadn't been so sick as to disfigure himself, he'd have looked normal.

But, he'd still have been sexually twisted.............................

why this he slept with other people's children. And that's why it wasn't surprising that more than one young boy accused him of being a child molester.

There's solid reporting in those pieces. And if it's all BS, why didn't the freakishly litigious MJ SUE Vanity Fair?

Answer: Because every single word in those articles was fact-checked by a legal team before it was published.

Stuff like this--fact after fact after fact:

As dysfunctional families go, it's hard to top the Jacksons. Katherine Jackson, the matriarch, once filed a petition for divorce and withdrew it, but papers found a few years ago in a warehouse where Jackson-family memorabilia had been stored revealed that she and three of her children had had a six-figure settlement against them for beating up one of the girlfriends of her husband, Joseph Jackson. In addition to his children by Katherine, Joseph has an illegitimate daughter. Rebbie, the eldest of the nine children, reportedly once pressed charges against her father for sexually molesting her when she was 12. Jackie, the eldest son, once suffered a broken leg when his first wife ran over him with a car after having caught him in bed with the singer Paula Abdul. Jermaine, a convert to Islam, has a girlfriend and two wives, one of whom, Alejandra, is in the process of divorcing him. She has one child, Jermajesty, with Jermaine and two with Jermaine's brother Randy, to whom she was engaged before Jermaine stole her away. In 1994 brother Tito's ex-wife drowned in a swimming pool, and her older lover was convicted of murdering her. At the 2004 Super Bowl, Janet caused a nationwide scandal with her "wardrobe malfunction." In 1989, La Toya left home, married her manager, wrote a tell-all book about the family, then returned to the fold, recanted, and accused her husband of beating her. Police recently questioned at least one of Michael Jackson's nephews about his relationship with his uncle.

http://www.vanityfair.com/fame/features/2005/07/orth200507?printable=true¤tPage=all



Live with that "technique." And keep worshipping a child molester, if it floats your boat.

Gacy became active in the local Democratic Party, first volunteering to clean the party offices.<35> In 1975 and 1976, he served on the Norwood Park Township street lighting committee.<36> He eventually earned the title of precinct captain.<5> In this capacity, he met and was photographed with First Lady Rosalynn Carter, who was in town for the annual Polish Constitution Day Parade, held on May 6, 1978.<37> Gacy was directing the parade that year, for the third year in a row. Carter posed for pictures with Gacy and autographed the photo "To John Gacy. Best Wishes. Rosalynn Carter". In the picture, Gacy is wearing an "S" pin, indicating a person who has received special clearance by the United States Secret Service.<38> During the search of Gacy's house after his arrest, this photo caused a major embarrassment to the Secret Service.<39> - wiki

Even for just a few days? I would like to know because it seems to me that Tookie Williams, the Crips gang banger who murdered 4 people, got more praise and respect after his execution than Michael Jackson did from DU.

Hide thread is your friend, if you actually don't want to handle the truth about this pervert.

You never saw me praising "Tookie Williams," whoever the fuck he was, so your point is not taken. People who praise a murderer are every bit as idiotic as those who idol-worship a child molester.

But I guess the new standard around here is guilty even if actually found not guilty. Unless, of course, the person is a Muslim foreign terrorist, in which case we have to withhold judgment and cross every T and dot every I before sending him to jail.

juries are strange things.

But even odder are the people who claim not to be able to see what is right under their noses..........

And I will respect the verdict of that jury, which heard over a year of testimony and reviewed the evidence more carefully than you or I.

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as the Innocence Project has showed time and again. Do you respect the jury verdicts in those cases?

"Not guilty" does not mean innocent, it means the state has not proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Dick Cheney hasn't been found guilty of anything, either. By your standard, he's an innocent man, too.

If your sole criteria for "innocence" is decisions made in courts of law, well, you may as well have your brain removed, because, plainly, you don't need it anymore.

Because Michael Jackson had so much money and power. Sure.

They could prosecute the priests of the Roman Catholic Church- but not Michael Jackson.
They could take down Republican Congressmen- but not Michael Jackson.

I never thought he was all that amazing, until now.

damn near half a century or more, before they were called to account.

And there were a lot more of them than there were one "pop" star. More victims, more evidence--yet it still took decades, and it's not done yet.

MJ had good lawyers the second time around. After all, one of them got a woman off from a shoplifting charge who was caught on tape. That's good lawyering.

What Republican Congressman was "taken down?" Someone wisely decidng not to run for reelection because the polls, based on news reports of their conduct, are against them isn't "taken down." But hey, whatever--you believe whatever you want.

I think Kids First is the way to go. And it doesn't matter if Jackson was "effeminate" or had the bearing of a longshoreman--I don't get why you even inserted that into your ramble--what he did to little children was just wrong. Excuse his behavior all you'd like, if that floats your boat. I think children are more important than a perverted old drug addict who used to be a pop star.

Maybe that's helpful in some way, to keep forgetting that.

and feeding them alcohol and who knows what else goes WAY beyond not being "perfect".

if that's possible.

yes, he's gone, and the sad fact remains that people like you have to keep spitting in his corpse's face.

you disgust me.

And he was a child molester.

Hide thread is probably a better option for you than saying people are "full of shit" because they don't like child molesters.

And calling a child molester a child molester isn't "spitting in his corpse's face." You're being absurdly overdramatic. Who'd even want to look at that train wreck's face?

Oh, you disgust me, too, for saying those things to the OP. They're uncalled for.

first

but he was never proven guilty of committing such a heinous crime. It isn't necessarily a confession of guilt when a celebrity pays off an accuser. In some cases they just don't want the bad publicity, and it's a fast way to make the problem disappear. Pedophilia is such a grave crime that the mere accusation of it can forever taint the accused even if they aren't guilty. The same goes for rape. For fuck's sake, let the man rest in peace you assholes.

don't seem like the actions of an innocent person. Just sayin'.

a child molester?

LOS ANGELES, CA – Plans for Michael Jackson’s funeral have been revealed by his estate.
Michael Jackson died yesterday afternoon of a heart attack. People all over the world mourn the loss of the King of Pop. In cities across the globe people gathered in squares and parks with candles in hand to mournfully sing his classics like “Beat It” and “Don’t Stop till You Get Enough.” In Utah the Salt Lake City Boys Choir did an a cappella version of “Billie Jean” that was broadcast on loudspeakers into the city and on Mormon Television Networks.
Representatives of the Jackson estate have released a statement detailing some of the plans for Mr. Jackson’s funeral. In his will Jackson wishes for his body to be cremated and sprinkled over the surface of the moon. However since then his finances have taken a downturn and new plans have had to be created.
A somber and respectful service will be held at an upscale funeral home in Los Angeles. The funeral will be closed casket, with a large picture of Michael from 1982. Seated front row will be Jackson’s ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley, the skeleton of the Elephant Man, Bubbles 4 (the most recent pet monkey to carry the name), and Macaulay Culkin. The remaining members of the Four Tops, The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross and the Supremes will all perform at the ceremony to pay their respects. Acting as pallbearers will be the Harlem Globetrotters, who made Michael an honorary member in 1978.
President Barrack Obama has expressed his sadness at the news of Jackson’s death. In respect he held his press conference on the matter wearing one white glove. Secret Service reports indicate he spent last night drinking scotch and moon-walking through the White House.
Sources within the intelligence community believe that Kim Jong Il may be planning a tribute concert in Pyongyang, wearing a red leather version of his standard jumpsuit. Photographs show Kim Jong Il desperately trying to learn the dance to Thriller.
The closed casket, and other details, have raised some questions. Yesterday afternoon also saw a flurry of strange meteorological activity over the New Mexico desert. When asked, one source working out of Area 51 who wishes to remain anonymous said “Michael? He not dead. He’s just going home.”
Despite his many controversies and eccentricities the world mourns the loss of this unforgettable musical icon.

http://weeklyworldnews.com/celebs/9386/michael-jacksons-funeral/

RIP Michael - just don't come back looking like a Zombie.

Let it go, babe.

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in his love for children...those who will not even allow one degree of the possibility that he was and did what he said he did...which is not molest children..that is a reflection of your thoughts rather than his..take him at his word, for one second...can you?...remote possibility, perhaps?..if any you cannot imagine sleeping with a child without having sexual thoughts, that is YOUR problem...

some pretty hardcore PORN, after the victim advised authorities that he viewed the porn with the pervert, that people would continue to defend Perv-O as "innocent."

If someone, knowing that, would consider his sleeping with children "innocent" at that point, I'd say they're incapable of basic logic, and would wonder how they got dressed every day without fucking that up.

readily available..but i cant do your research for you..you have to WANT to know the truth ..

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and then the payoffs for hush money. If you were a betting man, would you bet, based on the odds, that an innocent man would do that?

:thumbsup:

Probably never will. How can one determine the truth?

Either he was the vilest monster on earth or the hapless victim of one of the cruelest smear & hate campaigns of all time.

He will always be an enigma with passionate, prehaps even hysterical factions lining up on either side. One side is probably right. Which one?

Truly a mystery for the ages.

FACT: MJ's first accuser was able to draw a very detailed and exact picture of MJ's genital area.

That kind of proof is all any one should need.

Who else would hire the worthless hack but Vanity Fair?

VF is a great magazine. How odd that you don't like it....

i guess not

is the idol worship of entertainers dead or alive.